This is from the Asheville Citizen-Times …
******
Theater review: HART offers unique take on “Cabaret”
WAYNESVILLE – “Cabaret” has been performed many times in community theater. But at Haywood Arts Regional Theatre, director Charles Mills and company executive Steve Lloyd came up with a plan to make their version extraordinary and effective.
Their approach was to construct a large platform out over the audience seating area, where the action takes place. The audience is seated at bistro tables on the traditional stage. Literally turning around Waynesville’s Performing Arts Center, they have created more intimacy between the audience and actors, bringing the horror of Nazism close to all viewers.The cast serves as greeters and servers in the Kit-Kat Club before and between the acts. We become the “good Germans” who are drawn into the seductive appeal of decadence, debauchery and deviousness that was Berlin in the 1930s.
Mark Jones gives us an androgenous and seductive Emcee, with the help of gender-bending costumes by Cary Nichols and makeup by Beth Swanson. His slinky and sinister cabaret master of ceremonies suggests the way the German nation was programmed by the leaders of National Socialism. Jones carries the show with panache.
The other major role whose talents match the music is Julie Kinter as Sally Bowles, the impish young ingenue from Britain who finds herself out of her depth in the turmoil of Berlin in the 1930s. Kinter can carry a tune and emote with the best of ’em. Her romantic interest is the boyish and winsome David Ostergaard as the young American, Clifford Bradshaw, who has come to Berlin to write.
Beth Holmes’ choreography captures the feel of the original. Chuck Taft, Anne Rhymer, Linda Davis and David Bruce did their best to get the feel of the fine score by John Kandler. A few more real instruments and fewer electronic substitutes may have aided the support sounds behind the voices.
******
All-in-all a good review. I just wonder if the reviewer would like to loan us a few thousand dollars so we could hire people to play “a few more real instruments.” This pisses me off ’cause I am in a “focus on the negative” mood today.
